


Beating the Cosmos

by entropy25



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Adorable FitzSimmons (Agents of SHIELD), Alien Planet, Drama, Episode: s03e08 Many Heads One Tale, F/M, Fluff, Jemma chooses, POV Jemma Simmons, Romance, Totally not cursed, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 15:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5252945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entropy25/pseuds/entropy25
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You beat the cosmos. You reached across space and pulled me back. You did what Hydra hasn’t managed to do in thousands of years. So don’t tell me that the universe has any power over you, or me.”</p>
<p>Takes place after 3x08 "Many Heads, One Tale". Jemma Simmons deals with the new revelations about Hydra, her feelings for Fitz and Will, and makes a choice.</p>
<p>Brief cameo by Fitzsimmons shippers Bobbi and Hunter :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beating the Cosmos

A few weeks passed.

The days flew by in a blur of research and meetings; there were endless hours of alternatively paging through dusty manuscripts and staring at astronomical models on a computer screen. Slowly, the story began to unfold: Hydra went back further than anyone at S.H.IE.L.D. had ever fathomed. Theirs was a tradition steeped in legend and ritual sacrifice. Originally, they had been a cult with one purpose: to return the thing on that hellhole of a planet back to its rightful place on Earth. Hydra had been sending – sacrificing – people for centuries to try to accomplish this. No one had ever come back.

Until Jemma.

Coulson brought in countless specialists – historians, mythologists, astrophysicists, experts on alien culture – each with a barrage of questions for her. Knowing how valuable her experiences now were to S.H.I.E.L.D (and also with the awareness that any one of these specialists could hold the key to opening the portal and rescuing Will) Jemma patiently bore their questions. She painstakingly recounted her experience over and over, trying to recall any detail, no matter how seemingly miniscule, that could help with their investigation. She re-lived her nightmare time and time again, then trudged back to the lab, emotionally exhausted but still willing to pick up whatever book she had left open on her desk and continue poring through it, searching for answers. But the more that Jemma learned, the more questions she had. If this omnipotent Inhuman had the power to rule the Earth, how had she managed to avoid it for six months? More astonishingly, how had Will survived it for fourteen years? How much time did he have left, if at all? Or had it spared him for some reason?

These were the questions that plagued her days…but they were not what kept her up at night. When she returned to her room each night, Jemma felt ashamed that it was not Will’s struggle for survival that she thought of as she stared up at her ceiling in the dark. It was not ancient symbols that danced in front of her closed eyelids, and it was not the darkened planet that she dreamed of when she finally did drift into an uneasy slumber.

It was Fitz.

She lay awake remembering the warmth of his body as he pulled her against him. She woke in the middle of the night with the sensation of his lips on hers. When she closed her eyes all she could see was him, the desperate look on his face before he had kissed her. Over and over again she replayed every second, always ending with the heartbreaking sound of him uttering those two words: “ _We’re cursed_.”

They hadn’t spoken of it since it had happened. When he wasn’t in the lab, Fitz was also being pulled into never-ending meetings. After all, he had achieved something that Hydra had not managed to accomplish in thousands of years: he had made the portal open. For her.

Before their kiss, Jemma had been miserable. It had eaten her alive to watch Fitz selflessly try to help her find the man that he thought Jemma had fallen for instead of him. That was not the case, of course; she hadn’t fallen in love with Will instead of Fitz. She had always loved Fitz. She still loved Fitz. But once they had spoken about it, acted on it, Jemma worried that it would be even more difficult for her to be around him.

In fact, it was the opposite. Even when she was busy trying to calculate orbital trajectories or find a reference to a specific sect of some Hydra pre-cursor, she felt a longing to be near him. Every accidental brush against him sent electricity jolting through her body. Every time their eyes met, she found herself silently begging Fitz to grab her, to pull her into an embrace and desperately press his lips to hers again.

Jemma had felt guilty and ashamed before, roping Fitz into helping her find Will. She felt the same now, but in reverse; she was longing for Fitz at the same time that she was meant to be finding a way to save Will.  
She was angry and lonely, heartsick and confused. And the person that she normally consulted when she was faced with a difficult problem – her second set of eyes, the other half of her brain – was the one person that she could not talk this problem through with. Besides, he had already made his opinion clear.

“ _We’re cursed_.”

***

  
“Look at that,” Hunter said, clucking his tongue. He and Bobbi slowed as they entered the corridor leading to the lab. Bobbi followed his gaze to Simmons, who was standing at the window outside the lab. She was holding a mug of rapidly cooling tea and staring forlornly through the glass at Fitz, who was busy working away at several computers simultaneously.

“It’s driving me mad, watching those two,” Hunter said with a heavy sigh. “The angst. It’s too much.”

“Maybe I should talk to her,” Bobbi considered.

“The time for talking’s over, I reckon. We should just lock the two of them in a bloody room together so that they can get on with it.”

Bobbi rolled her eyes. “And this is why our own relationship has been so smooth and trouble-free.”

“Actually, I believe that many of our problems were worked out by exactly that method,” Hunter retorted.

“I am going to talk to her,” Bobbi decided, slowing down. Hunter shrugged and kept walking. As he passed behind an oblivious Simmons, he gestured towards his face, mouthing the words, _Tell her about the hog face_ before winking at Bobbi and turning the corner. Bobbi sighed and stopped next to Simmons.

“You okay?” she asked.

Simmons jumped, visibly startled from some reverie. Her tea sloshed over the sides of her mug, the amber liquid splattering on the floor at her feet.

“Oh! Hello Bobbi!” Simmons said in a falsely cheerful voice. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“You seemed pretty distracted,” Bobbi said meaningfully, nodding her head towards what Simmons had been staring at in the lab. Simmons’ face flushed.

“Oh. I was…I just…” Simmons let her breath out in a huff, looking flustered.

“Look, Jemma,” Bobbi said gently. “You’re in a really difficult situation…”

“It’s an impossible situation,” Simmons moaned. “There’s no way out of it without hurting someone.”

“Someone is going to get hurt either way,” Bobbi agreed. “The sooner you accept that, the better. But you can’t go on like this. You need to make a choice.”

“I have,” Simmons said quietly. “There was only ever really one choice. For me.”

Bobbi arched an eyebrow. “Then what’s the problem?”

“It just…it doesn’t seem fair,” Simmons continued miserably. “I mean, how do you choose one without feeling terribly about how you’re treating the other?”

Bobbi sighed. “You don’t.”

“Both of them have done so much…they were both selfless, brave…they both saved my life…”

“But you don’t fall in love with someone because you owe it to them,” Bobbi pointed out. “And you shouldn’t feel terrible about wanting to be with someone else. If there’s someone that you never want to be without…” Bobbi glanced down the hall at the spot where Hunter had departed, a small smile on her lips. “…then you deserve to be with that person.

Simmons’ brow suddenly smoothed and her shoulders relaxed, as if something Bobbi said had struck a chord with her. She tore her eyes away from the lab and turned to Bobbi.

“And he,” Bobbi gestured towards Fitz, “he deserves to know what you’ve decided, either way.”

Simmons nodded, her face breaking into a smile. “Thank you, Bobbi. Truly.”

Bobbi shrugged. “Look, I’m obviously not the poster child for healthy romantic relationships. But it was my relationship advice or Hunter’s, and I figured I would spare you the latter.”

Simmons gave her another smile. Then she turned back to the window, glancing once more at Fitz. She took a deep breath and walked into the lab.

***

  
“Fitz.”

He was standing, leaning forward with both palms braced against his lab bench, watching a series of calculations run on his laptop. It was late and the lab was empty; they were alone. He turned around at his name, and Jemma could see by the look on his face that he had read her tone and knew what was coming. Fitz took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, visibly bracing himself.

“I need to talk to you about - ” Jemma began.

“I know. I’ve been thinking too.” Fitz ran a hand through his hair; the gesture was familiar, a quirk of Fitz’s whenever he was nervous or frustrated. Jemma remembered when they were at the Academy and his hair was longer. It had often been a disaster, an untidy mop of curls sticking up at the ends from him running his hands through it, especially around finals or when he became absorbed with a problem.

“Look, what I said before about the…about the cosmos trying to,” Fitz gestured vaguely, “keep us apart - ”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Fitz, the cosmos are not trying to - ”

“No, Jemma, listen. You’ve already been through so much - ”

“Fitz, stop it, I – ”

He raised his voice to carry over hers. “We’re obviously not meant to be - ”

“You can’t - ”

“ - and I don’t want you to have to…I just want you to…to be happy,” he said, his voice breaking on the last word.

“Fitz - ”

“And I don’t think - ”

“Fitz, shut _up_!” she cried in frustration, slamming her fist down loudly on the nearest desk.

The sound silenced him more than anything. Fitz was the emotional one, the one to punch a wall or bang on tables, not Jemma. He stared at her expectantly, heartache written on his face.

“The universe is not trying to keep us apart,” Jemma said slowly. “For God’s sake, Fitz, if you want to talk about the bloody cosmos…you beat the cosmos. You reached across space and pulled me back. You did what Hydra hasn’t managed to do in thousands of years. So don’t tell me that the universe has any power over you, or me.”

Fitz shakily let out a breath but remained silent. Jemma forged onwards, her heart thumping in her chest.

“You need to understand,” she said slowly, “that while I was in that horrible place, every second of every minute of every hour…I was thinking of you. Even when it seemed hopeless. Even when I thought that I would never see you again. Even after…after Will…” Jemma’s voice trembled slightly. “…I was still thinking of you. Talking to you - out loud, or to myself. Even though I had accepted that logically, there was no chance of going home, some small part of me knew that you would never give up.”

Fitz was still, watching her closely. She knew that he believed her. Jemma had never let go of that phone, her only link to home, to him. Even after it was long dead she had kept it on her at all times, kept him with her always.

“So when I saw that flare,” Jemma said quietly, “I knew it was you immediately. I ran for it without thinking. Then that…that thing came for us, and I lost Will and at first…at first I stopped, I was trying to find him, but then I heard your voice and I…I forgot everything else. I just ran towards you. Blindly. I didn’t even look back. I left him behind.”

She had told this story dozens of times now, but never like this. She had never admitted, even to Fitz, how quick she had been to run for home, run for him, to leave her saviour on that planet behind.

“The fact is, I do love Will,” Jemma said bluntly. Fitz sucked in a breath as if he had been punched in the stomach, but Jemma pressed on. This needed to be said. “But it’s different than what you think. I love him for keeping me safe and for keeping me sane in that godforsaken place. For giving me the chance to live and to come home. How could I not? And I’m ashamed, Fitz, at how quickly I left him behind. That’s why we need to open the portal again. That’s why we need to save him. Because he gave me the chance to come home to you. And in return, I didn’t even look back.”

Jemma took a few steps forward. Her eyes met his, those familiar eyes that she had seen flash in anger or light up with discovery or twinkle with laughter a million times. She reached towards Fitz, fingertips brushing the side of his face.

“The truth is that I couldn’t have survived without Will,” Jemma said softly. “But…but I can’t live without you.”

He stared back at her, searching her face. Jemma stood there for what seemed like hours, her heart thudding rapidly.

And then, suddenly, he was pulling her towards him again and kissing her as he had that first time – desperately, passionately. Jemma melted into his embrace, her fingers in the short curls at the back of his neck, her body pressed against his. She felt a great wave of something sweep through her, something almost akin to relief; as if she had been waiting for this, yearning for this, since the second they had broken apart weeks ago. Or perhaps she had been waiting for it even longer – since a dinner proposition – or since a confession at the bottom of the sea – or even from the moment she had met a pasty, untidy-haired, brilliant young man all those years ago.

After what seemed like a blissful eternity, Fitz’s grip on her loosened and the kiss slowed, became languorous, sweet. This time, when they broke apart he didn’t walk away. They just held each other, his forehead resting on hers, breathing each other in.

They were Fitzsimmons, and not even the universe could tear them apart.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written after episode 3x08 "Many Heads, One Tale". I'm guessing that by the next episode it will no longer be canon unless the writers of AOS troll this site for ideas like we always hope they do and completely steal this one (which for the record, I am okay with).
> 
> Even if Will turns out to be Evil!Will, I would really like Jemma to choose Fitz because she wants to, not because Will is, well, evil. Hence this fic.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and if you enjoyed it, please leave a review! :)


End file.
